Francisco Largo Caballero

Francisco Largo Caballero (15 October 1869-23 March 1946) was Prime Minister of Spain from 4 September 1936 to 17 May 1937, succeeding Jose Giral Pereira and preceding Juan Negrin Lopez. He was a major PSOE and UGT leader.

Biography
Francisco Largo Caballero was born in Madrid, Spain in 1869, and he was forced to leave school and work at the age of 7, eventually becoming a plasterer. Owing to his experience of social injustice, he became active in the labor union movement, and soon rose within the ranks of the UGT and the PSOE. After organizing the 1917 general strike he was imprisoned, which made him a national hero and secured his election to the Cortes in 1918. Increasingly on the pragmatic wing of the PSOE, he became secretary-general of the UGT, and vice-president of the PSOE in 1918. After Miguel Primo de Rivera's abdication he joined the provisional Republican government, and in 1931 became Minister of Labor. The radicalization of workers and the threat that they might defect to groupings further to the left pushed him to more radical positions in the mid-1930s. In addition, he was embittered and radicalized by right-wing hostility to his labor reforms in the countryside. He was imprisoned for his hostility to the Republic for most of 1935. At first, he opposed a coalition with the Republicans, and thus prevented the creation of a stable government coalition in 1936. In response to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he became Prime Minister himself at the head of a Frente Popular government. He was unable to resist the growing domination of his cabinet by the Communist Party of Spain, which was responsible for his resignation in 1937. After the civil war he went to France, but was imprisoned, first by the Vichy regime, and then by the Gestapo, which sent him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He died in Paris in 1946.